In his book The 4-Hour Work Week, Tim Ferriss talks about the importance of replacing assumptions.  In business, it’s very easy to work from common assumptions.  Everyone else does it that way, right?  So why wouldn’t you?

For example, for years we’ve been hearing that “the customer is always right”.  We’ve been trained to live in scarcity mode, gladly accepting any business that comes our way – sometimes gaining customers or clients that are very difficult to serve.   Spending a lot of time with a high maintenance customer under the guise that “the customer is always right” will likely hurt your business much more than help it.  Why?  Because you and your team spend more time at a lesser margin of profit and time is money, after all.

What if you broke the rules, and made a commitment to let go of all your low-profit- and often annoying- customers?  That’s right; you simply eliminate them from your business entirely!  Can you imagine the implications?  What would your customer service world look like?  Would you go out of business because you no longer serve those customers?  The answer is simply… of course not!  You would spend more time with your profitable customers, giving them the attention they deserve – and most likely up-sell them in the process.  You would improve the morale of your customer service team by removing a great deal of potentially negative energy from their workloads. You would also empower your front line to stand up for what is right rather than cower to the demands of a self-righteous customer.

Firing customers?  That is big.  I promise that once you’ve actually done it, you’ll be very glad you did.

There are many other assumptions that limit our business thinking.  We make assumptions about the market or the economy, and the associated effect both have on our growth potential.    We assume that jobs must be done from an office; when, in reality, giving someone mobility would increase job satisfaction and potentially improves production levels.

The important lesson here is that we always have options.  In order to grow in the new economy, we must encourage non-traditional thinking.  If we’re on the wrong bus, let’s get off now!  That means that in some cases, we must forget everything we think we know – we must question everything without assumption.  In doing so, we can only benefit.

Letting go of our assumptions allows us to think creatively.  It allows us to uncover inefficiencies in our business that may have immediate and direct effects on our bottom line.  Thinking creatively will give you an edge in the market place.  The buzz it creates will undoubtedly increase interest in doing business with your company.  So let go of your assumptions and prepare for prosperity!

It’s an unusual world.  Recalibrate the compass.

Coach Charrise

Remember the case study in this blog a few weeks ago?  It was about Henry, the leader of a family business.  Henry was challenged with a perspective problem that was solved by hiring a coach to help him see what he could not possibly see himself.

During the coaching process, Henry’s coach trained him to communicate more effectively.  She encouraged him to remove the emotion from a difficult situation in order to make level headed decisions.  Under her guidance, Henry learned the value of showing vulnerability.  He learned how to communicate openly with the truth, and how doing so enlists support from sometimes unlikely places.

She worked with him to discover how to effectively work with people’s strengths, rather than trying to improve their weaknesses.  By helping Henry match talent to task, he was able to create a culture that recognized every employee for what they bring to the table.  In some cases, Henry found that certain employees were damaging the culture.  He learned how to communicate the expectation that negative attitudes were not tolerated.  He learned to let the people go if it meant the culture would improve.

Together, they reviewed the sales process; with a new perspective, Henry thought of great ideas that were very obvious once he took off the rose colored glasses.  Sales increased.  Customer service people were empowered with decision making ability.  They were treated with honor and respect, as Henry built and implemented an employee appreciation program.  Henry and his coach discovered ways to help employees find joy in their work again.

They stood together through the challenges associated with change.  They created a powerful relationship built upon truth and transparency, which served them both.  Before Henry hired a coach, he took his business problems home to his wife.  Dinner with the family was clouded by fatigue and negativity.  His wife felt helpless to offer advice – she simply didn’t understand what he was facing. This caused a tension in his relationships at home.  The coach provided an outlet for voicing the fear that Henry felt.  His wife noticed that Henry was happier, and dinner was more positive.

If you think this scenario is just a pie in the sky story, you are wrong.  These are very common issues inside a business.  What Henry realized, is that by pausing to consider what was going well and what was not going well, and by bringing another person without bias inside his world, he was able to leap forward much faster than had he continued to plow through the challenges on his own.

Henry learned to be a leader.  True leaders have the courage to gain access to the resources that can help them achieve success.  Leaders with a big vision create remarkable opportunities to have a positive impact on the lives of those they lead.

Henry didn’t have a clear idea what coaching would do for him, until he entered a coaching relationship.  He just knew he would not work it out by himself.  Because he was able to lay down his ego, and realize that to be a phenomenal leader he didn’t have to have all the answers himself, he created a company equipped to survive for the long term.

Are you like Henry?

Coach Charrise

In order to fully appreciate what you’re about to read, allow me to explain just how I arrived at the topic for this blog.  My husband and I had a date last Saturday night.  We went to the movies, something I truly enjoy doing.  Unlike me, my husband doesn’t place going to the movies high on his list of fun things to do.  But after 26 years of marriage, we’ve learned to compromise.  If I’m really in the mood for a movie, he will go but I have to agree to let him choose the movie.  This time he chose to see the newly released Batman sequel, The Dark Night.  First, you need to know that I am not qualified to be a movie critic nor am I interested in being one.  But as a consumer I have an opinion – of which I am about to share.  I warn you, this is just an opinion even if it sounds a lot more like a rant.

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The theatre was crowded so our seats were further up front than we liked- it was Saturday night, after all.  We got settled in our less than desirable seats as the movie begins.  I was expecting the movie to be some version of the last Batman movie I saw…some violence, good storyline, a little romance.  However, that’s not what we got.

The Dark Night was extremely graphic with violence.  There was very little substance to the movie other than the constant attacks on the people of Gotham City.  Though the movie did not present actual blood and guts, as other movies do, it was action packed – exhibiting a violent act every few minutes.  The sound level and visual graphics of the movie were over-the-top disturbing- especially for seats so close to the screen.

As you likely know, the storyline of Batman comics is based upon the timeless battle between good and evil.  Batman breaks laws and hurts people in the interest of protecting the people of Gotham from the bad guys.  His violence is strictly to protect the greater good.  In this movie, the Joker’s sole purpose was to reveal Batman’s true identity.  In the process, the Joker succeeded in corrupting an upstanding citizen (and prosecuting attorney) who happened to be in a relationship with Batman’s old girlfriend.

The last thirty minutes of the movie focused on Harvey, the monster of a prosecuting attorney who was corrupted by the Joker.  During one of the battles, one side of Harvey’s face had become burned off from fire.  Harvey refused skin grafts, and thus was seen for the rest of the movie with a garish face without skin.  His eye bulged out with no eyelid, his cheek showed bone, and lipless, his teeth and gums were fully exposed.  Evil Harvey had gone to the dark side.

Without giving you the entire story and perhaps spoiling the movie for you, I’d like to make a point.  There were times in the movie where I was so disturbed by the graphic images in front of me, that I had to hide my eyes.  When the movie was finished, my stomach was in knots, and my head hurt.  I wished I hadn’t gone.

I couldn’t shake the feeling the movie gave me for the rest of the weekend.  Even today, it lingers.  I might have been the only one in the movie theatre repulsed by the violent nature of a PG-13 rated movie based upon a comic book hero.  While there was no language and no sex in the movie, I was appalled by the idea that kids would come to see this movie.  I knew that kids would like the action and the cool Batman car and the awesome stunts with fire and force.  The unfortunate thing is that this has become normal entertainment, and as parents we allow our children to be exposed to it.

The amount and degree of violent acts in movies seem to be the norm, and we as consumers have become desensitized to the outrageous levels of violence that movie makers have reached.  The storyline was all but lost on me, because of my distraction with the ugly images on the big screen.

Here’s my question: What affect do movies like this have on our psyche, and that of our children?  I was thinking about movies of the past, before movie-makers had the tools and technology to create such graphic scenes like the ones in The Dark Night.  The worse it ever got were scenes from movies like Bonnie and Clyde or John Wayne westerns of shootings and spilled blood but even then it was obvious the blood was not real. What a contrast to the movies made today!  We’ve raised our level of tolerance by being entertained by things we’d never want to see in real life.  We have new limits, and nothing seems to shock us anymore.

We all have choices about the way we become entertained.  I choose not to endure violent movies because of the affect they have on my sensibilities.  Of course I know that the images aren’t real, but my body felt pain as I watched others fall from buildings and burn in a warehouse.  This is not entertainment, for me.

What do you allow into your head and into your heart?

What affect is it having on the way you conduct your life?

It’s naïve to think that there is no affect.  Negative programming is all around us, on television, in movie theatres, in the newspaper, and online.  As consumers we all have a choice.  I recommend we take a stand and refuse to consume the violence, hate, fear, and evil that’s offered for our daily consumption.

Coach Charrise